Tell Me, Please

Think about having no feeling

in your fingers, your toes or half of your body.

How does that feel?

Think about having no feelings

just one constant emotion

a new emotion

one that isn't happy but you only smile.

one where you are sad, but can only laugh.

one that doesn't allow any other true feeling or emotions.

how does that feel?

Think about being hungry

and only getting nauseous at the smell yet alone taste of food

Think about your favorite meal and one thing you would never eat to both taste the same.

How does that feel?

Think about when you want the volume up on the T.V.

but you can't because the volume is already blaring in your head.

How does that feel?

Think about wanting to tell someone a story about yourself

but not knowing the words to use or how to put a sentence together to deliver a proper conversation.

Think about knowing what you want to say in your head

but never being able to speak because by the time your thought gets to your lips you had forgotten it.

How does that make you feel?

Do you feel angered? Anxious? Humiliated?

or Do you feel misunderstood? or that others think you're antisocial?

Do you feel misrepresented? or like crawling under a rock because you cannot do things as simple as speaking like you did before?

How do you feel?

How do you feel when it's all taken away?

When all you once had is now gone?

How do you feel when you try your hardest?

And your hardest is too weak to even make the smallest scratch?

How do you feel?

Losing so much?

Your vision, your speech, your thoughts

How does it feel?

Losing

Your taste, your smell, your sense of touch

How does it feel?

Losing your abilities

To walk

To bend over

To go to the restroom

To feel emotions

How does it feel?

When you can't put your own words together for a complete sentence. When you know what you want to say, yet it comes out too fast, stuttered and slurred.

Do you know how it feels to not be able to explain how you feel? That thinking is so hard to explain yourself that you just agree with what anyone says just so you don't have to think of an answer?

Do you know?

How it feels to be missing in the work force?

To feel so inadequate to your peers that you hide in shame because you can not have a conversation with them about the day you had at work?

Or how it feels to have lost a trade you were so proud of? A title as an educator of that trade? Or to miss teaching others to carry on the legacy of that trade in the future generations?

Do you know how I feel?

Do you know how it feels to be me? A spoonie? A chronic invisible illness warrior?

Do you?